Deuda informal y gota a gota: una revisión de antecedentes de investigación

Introduction: The act of lending predates capitalist societies; however, currently subjects excluded from capital markets choose to acquire financing from informal sources; among which reference is made to the figure of the gota a gota. Objetive: Discuss the production of knowledge associated with the study of informal debt and the gota a gota, mainly in Latin America. Method and technique: A review of 137 publications was carried out in different databases, academic repositories and the artificial intelligence tool Research Rabbit published between 1989 and 2024 was used. Results: Most of the research was published in journal articles (42.34%), in areas of Economic Sciences (56.20%). Broadly speaking, informal debt is a source of financing provided by a variety of subjects, which is accessed by people excluded from the regulated financial system with greater ease of access; while the gota a gota is associated with loans linked to illicit sources from drug trafficking and collection mechanisms considered usurious when it is not possible for the indebted people to pay off the debt. Conclusions: The lending subjects in the gota a gota have both economic and social power; economic by being able to modify the conditions of credit according to their interest and social by reproducing a collective fear of what can happen. While the states and the market have generated the conditions of exclusion so that this situation is perpetuated.